The Linux Thread!

[sal_vager]

When you start your script from the terminal with ./yourscriptnamehere it will print to the terminal what it's doing, also if KSP starts at all it'll write a KSP.log in the game folder and a player.log in "/home/user/.config/unity3d/Squad/Kerbal Space Program", the logs should say why KSP crashed.

For your VM error logs you'd have to check your VM's documentation.

[ebigunso]

okay the problem was that I was placing the script at Desktop. It was failing to find the KSP folder and settings.cfg. I placed the script inside the KSP folder and it worked

Thanks for the advice!

Next, about the FSAA and Nvidia drivers. I've installed the xorg PPA like written in the OP and ran "apt-get update", but when I try to open the Nvidia settings via the terminal ("nvidia-settings"), I get the message that it's not installed.

Have I done something wrong? How do I properly get the Nvidia driver installed?

[micha]

I've installed the xorg PPA like written in the OP and ran "apt-get update", but when I try to open the Nvidia settings via the terminal ("nvidia-settings"), I get the message that it's not installed.

Have I done something wrong? How do I properly get the Nvidia driver installed?

The driver is (probably) installed fine, but the NVidia Settings application is a separate install (at least on Debian). Try this:

$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-settings

[micha]

And one more, you said you don't like VM ware so if you use something else that's better in your perspective, please tell me what that is. I'm just using VM cuz I don't know anything else.

Don't know about the other guy, but I like VirtualBox.

[steve_v]

Likewise. My main gripe with VMware is that they're ripping off Linux, in breach of the GPL. Whether this is actually upheld in court is of no concern to me... there's clearly Linux kernel code in there.

[ebigunso]

I installed nvidia settings via the terminal. Now when I run it, I get the following message:

ERROR: nvidia-settings could not find the registry key file. This file should
       have been installed along with this driver at
       /usr/share/nvidia/nvidia-application-profiles-key-documentation. The
       application profiles will continue to work, but values cannot be
       preopulated or validated, and will not be listed in the help text.
       Please see the README for possible values and descriptions.

And the settings window doesn't have the GPUs listed like they are in the picture in the OP.

Also, in the OP's picture, it's leaving the source file location blank. Is that supposed to be like that or I'm supposed the leave that field as default? I'm also getting errors saying "The key [GLFSAAMode] is not recognized by nvidia-settings" when I set the key in the add new profile window. Whats wrong here?

[steve_v]

Ok, just to get this straight, Are you trying to install Nvidia drivers (for your real GPU) inside a VM?

Unless VMware is set up for PCI pass through (No, I don't know how, but apparently it's possible) that's not going to work. The guest OS won't see the real GPU but rather a virtual GPU provided by the VM, this is why games in a VM suck.

What's the output of 'lspci | grep VGA' inside the guest OS? Is your Nvidia card listed?

If it's not, you are running on a virtualised GPU and the Nvidia driver won't work anyway.

FWIW, the guest OS video driver for the virtual GPU is in 'xserver-xorg-video-vmware'.

Long story short, don't use a VM, install GNU/Linux on real hardware.

Edited July 30, 2015 by steve_v

[Tellion]

FWIW, the guest OS video driver for the virtual GPU is in 'xserver-xorg-video-vmware'.

Long story short, don't use a VM, install GNU/Linux on real hardware.

This. Also, A dualboot install is not hard to set up at all and very much worth the effort.

[Raptor831]

This. Also, A dualboot install is not hard to set up at all and very much worth the effort.

I'll be doing just this hopefully this weekend. Finally got a decent enough external drive I can use for Linux-y things, like playing KSP in 64-bit.

@ebigunso Yeah, VMs are great but not for gaming. It's just hard for the virtual machine to access the resources needed to run stuff well. I've tried this with an old XP install running on my Mac in VirtualBox. 2D games worked well enough (like Command and Conquer), but 3D ones just plain broke.

If you can find an external drive (you don't need a big one, like ~40GB would do if all you want is an OS and a few games), you should install Linux on that. Not sure how this works on Windows, but on Macs you can just switch your boot drives at will (on startup or in the OS). I've had an internal OS X, Bootcamp Win XP, and an external bootable OS X all connected before without any trouble. It definitely is worth the effort to get this running.

[Tellion]

If you can find an external drive (you don't need a big one, like ~40GB would do if all you want is an OS and a few games), you should install Linux on that. Not sure how this works on Windows, but on Macs you can just switch your boot drives at will (on startup or in the OS). I've had an internal OS X, Bootcamp Win XP, and an external bootable OS X all connected before without any trouble. It definitely is worth the effort to get this running.

From installing Ubuntu over and over again, I also found it to play very nice with Windows installed on the same drives, provided Ubuntu comes after the other operating systems. Not so much for the other way around^^

No experience with OS X though.

[WeirdCulture]

if you are afraid to mess up your existing operating systems and if you have USB 3.0 ports, buy a external harddrive and install it there, then boot from USB via your BIOS bootscreen.

[ebigunso]

OK following your advice I've started an attempt to install Ubuntu to an external HDD but things aren't going so well.

I've asked this on Ask Ubuntu but I'm not getting answers so I'll post here too.

I want to install Ubuntu to an external USB connected HDD, but the HDD in question shows up as a disk drive so I can't install to it. How do I fix this?

I'm now booting in with a disk of Ubuntu 14.04 64bit that I burned from an ISO.

The HDD in question is HD-LXVU3C. The access lamp is lit red, so I assume something is not configured right in the OS side?

[sal_vager]

It should work, I was able to install Ubuntu to a flash drive before, the Ubuntu installer lets you choose what drive to install to.

During the install there is an option to "do something else" with the choice of install, this opens a partition manager which will show all the drives.

What might work would be to set the USB drive as the boot drive in the bios.

[ebigunso]

Well the thing is, I'm booting from the boot CD to install in the first place, so booting from the USB device isn't gonna work (there is no OS there in the first place).

I picked the "do something else" option to choose the install partition, but only the internal hard drives were listed there and not the external device I was trying to install to. Checked with GParted also and got the same result.

What I see is a few icons labeled "drive" which has a hard drive icon and shows up in the above situation, and an icon labeled "HD-LXVU3C" (which is the external drive) with a CD icon, which I assume means that the computer thinks it's looking at a disk inserted to a disk drive.

I'm really not sure why it does this. Any ideas?

[sal_vager]

What else can you tell us about this drive?

The best place to ask might be [here] on the gparted forum, though a quick search didn't find this problem.

[steve_v]

What does 'dmesg' produce regarding the drive after you plug it in?

Example from ordinary old "thumb drive":

Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1f75, idProduct=0902
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: Product: PenDrive
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Innostor
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 0902100000000000000000000058
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Fri Aug  7 21:57:32 2015 scsi10 : usb-storage 2-1:1.0 [B]<--- Detected as mass-storage, accessible as a standard SCSI drive.[/B] 
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Innostor Innostor         1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg8 type 0
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] 32292864 512-byte logical blocks: (16.5 GB/15.3 GiB)
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] Write Protect is off
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] No Caching mode page found
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] Assuming drive cache: write through
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015  sdh: sdh1  [B]<--- Here is the disk (/dev/sdh) and partition (/dev/sdh1) same as a standard hard disk, can be used as such.[/B]
Fri Aug  7 21:57:33 2015 sd 10:0:0:0: [sdh] Attached SCSI removable disk

Since this is treated as an ordinary SCSI disk drive, the installer will happily install to it.

You can also get more information with 'lsusb'. 'lsusb -t' for example will show the device hierarchy, including the driver in use, 'lsusb -v' will dump a whole lot of info you probably don't need etc.

My guess is that the disk is presenting itself as something other than USB mass-storage, but I can't find any information on that device in a language I can read. So I dunno.

Post the relevant dmesg output and someone might have seen one before. Maybe.

Edited August 7, 2015 by steve_v

[sal_vager]

This may be the wrong track, but it's possible the drive is damaged.

This post shows a person having a similar issue but with a Toshiba HDD, which turned out to have many damaged sectors when scanned with chkdsk.

I find very few results when searching for this kind of problem which suggests that it is uncommon, I'd expect most HDD's with damage to either be more obviously damaged, or not work at all.

If the drive is old and well used that might account for it, and doing a surface scan of the drive to check it is okay before continuing might be a good idea.

[linuxgurugamer]

Well the thing is, I'm booting from the boot CD to install in the first place, so booting from the USB device isn't gonna work (there is no OS there in the first place).

I picked the "do something else" option to choose the install partition, but only the internal hard drives were listed there and not the external device I was trying to install to. Checked with GParted also and got the same result.

What I see is a few icons labeled "drive" which has a hard drive icon and shows up in the above situation, and an icon labeled "HD-LXVU3C" (which is the external drive) with a CD icon, which I assume means that the computer thinks it's looking at a disk inserted to a disk drive.

I'm really not sure why it does this. Any ideas?

Check the BIOS. It sounds like the USB is not being initialized at BIOS time. There should be a setting there which will enable boot from USB. Enable it, but continue to boot from the DVD drive.

LGG

[steve_v]

The first step is probably still going to be getting the device node(dev/sd[x]), you'll need it to surface scan (badblocks) run self-tests (smartctl) and possibly fix or re-create the partition table...

Or remove proprietary garbage-ware such as U3. Any of these issues can cause a drive to appear as a cdrom. And yes, physical defects can too, though it is uncommon.

If this has ever had a hybrid-iso install image (e.g. debian) written to it, that'll do it too. Nuking it with Destroyer of Disks + creating a new partition table should fix.

I'd be surprised if Gparted didn't pick up on most of these though.

- - - Updated - - -

Ahh yes, do check the usb-disk emulation mode and usb-legacy settings in BIOS too.

Edited August 7, 2015 by steve_v

[linuxgurugamer]

The first step is probably still going to be getting the device node(dev/sd[x]), you'll need it to surface scan (badblocks) run self-tests (smartctl) and possibly fix or re-create the partition table...

Or remove proprietary garbage-ware such as U3. Any of these issues can cause a drive to appear as a cdrom. And yes, physical defects can too, though it is uncommon.

If this has ever had a hybrid-iso install image (e.g. debian) written to it, that'll do it too. Nuking it with Destroyer of Disks + creating a new partition table should fix.

I'd be surprised if Gparted didn't pick up on most of these though.

- - - Updated - - -

Ahh yes, do check the usb-disk emulation mode and usb-legacy settings in BIOS too.

His problem was that there wasn't even a device node

[sal_vager]

His problem was that there wasn't even a device node

Er, no, I think you need to re-read this issue, the drive is there but it's being detected as a cdrom, not a hdd, so it cannot be selected as an installation target.

The dvd drive with the linux cd is another drive entirely from the one causing this issue.

[Raptor831]

I'm having trouble getting Ubuntu to work properly for me. I can install Ubuntu on my external drive, load it with rEFInd (I'm on an iMac), and launch the OS. The problem is I can't get the graphics drivers to work with my card (I think). I have an old card (Radeon HD 4850) which is a notebook card to boot. Since, that's how Apple rolls...

Anyway, I have to boot with the "nomodeset" flag, since otherwise it's just a black screen. With that I can get into the desktop, update the OS, launch programs, etc. But there's no way I could play KSP on that. I've tried the newer open source drivers as described in this thread with no luck. I've attempted to get the legacy AMD Catalyst drivers, but I think I botched that. My next move after reinstalling Ubuntu is to try and install fglrx by building from the legacy driver without trying anything else.

But, I'm not confident that'll work. Does anyone here know of how to get this card to play nice? Or at least point me to some resources? I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I'm open to using another flavor of Linux, especially if it'll work without having to hunt down drivers everywhere.

[sal_vager]

Hate to give you bad news Raptor831, but AMD dropped support for that and earlier cards, I have one as well though it's in a box now, and I can only use it with the open source driver.

X.org saw major updates around 2012 and AMD didn't want to update their old drivers for it, forcing Linux users to downgrade x.org just to keep using their graphics cards, my guess is they hoped to spur people to buy new cards, they late relented and released a 13.1 revision of the legacy driver but it seems to be no longer available, at least it is not on the AMD website.

The last version of Ubuntu known to work with HD4000 series cards is 12.04.1 which is supported till 2017.

There's no easy answer here, you could try to run KSP on an older version of Ubuntu but there may be other issues with KSP needing later libraries, you could try downgrading x.org, or just stick to the open source driver, or if it was a desktop, replace the card.

The treatment of Linux by AMD, Nvidia and others leaves a lot to be desired.

[Raptor831]

Hate to give you bad news Raptor831, but AMD dropped support for that and earlier cards, I have one as well though it's in a box now, and I can only use it with the open source driver.

X.org saw major updates around 2012 and AMD didn't want to update their old drivers for it, forcing Linux users to downgrade x.org just to keep using their graphics cards, my guess is they hoped to spur people to buy new cards, they late relented and released a 13.1 revision of the legacy driver but it seems to be no longer available, at least it is not on the AMD website.

The last version of Ubuntu known to work with HD4000 series cards is 12.04.1 which is supported till 2017.

There's no easy answer here, you could try to run KSP on an older version of Ubuntu but there may be other issues with KSP needing later libraries, you could try downgrading x.org, or just stick to the open source driver, or if it was a desktop, replace the card.

The treatment of Linux by AMD, Nvidia and others leaves a lot to be desired.

I was really hoping that wasn't the answer. I had seen that AMD had stopped supporting older cards, but I was still hoping. And the dumb this is that the Ubuntu open source drivers say they work with the card.

Ah, well, everything still works on the Mac. Thanks for the help, sal. Might try later, and if I do get it to work I'll be sure to leave a note here.

[ebigunso]

Okay now I've gone into the BIOS and checked the settings. For the boot drive settings, the only things listed were the DVD Drive and the HDD where windows is installed on, so I couldn't select the external disk from there. Even the other HDDs on my computer weren't listed so I assume only the DVD drive and the HDD with any kind of OS installed shows up there.

Now on another place (I forgot exactly where, but the tab to the right from the boot config: I'll write later) I found a column named "Buffalo 0001", and that looked as if it was related so I configured that to "HardDisk" instead of "Auto" which was selected by default. Other options I remember was there were FDD and Force FDD.

Now I tried booting into the Linux CD from there. No luck.

I've then tried disconnecting the external HDD when I boot up, then after I'm in the desktop screen, plugging it back in. No luck either. Still the damn thing shows up as a CDROM.

At that moment I went on to taking pictures of the situation. I'll post those below. Sorry for the crude method of showing this.

*ドライブ = Drive

*システムã§予約済ã¿ = Reserved by System

/dev/sdb is where windows is installed.

I forgot to run dmesg so I'll do that later on.

Just as a side note, my external HDD is a 4TB model so it's obvious the thing is not listed here.

Edited August 13, 2015 by ebigunso